After Stacee Lynn Bell’s children left for college, she and her husband found 14 acres “in the middle of nowhere” on which to build their dream barndominium. Her home, and those that she designs, focus on the connection between outdoor and indoor space. | Credit Arturo Olmos for The New York Times
By Colette Coleman | The New York Times
In the 1980s, the “barndominium” was designed with the horse owner in mind. A Connecticut developer came up with the name — a mash-up of “barn” and “condominium” — to refer to a lot and horse stall purchased together, in a subdivision where owners had a stake in a shared equestrian center.
The barndominiums of today don’t necessarily hold horses, though they’re certainly big enough. They do still promise open space, both inside and out.
Interpretations vary, but many in the housing industry define today’s barndominiums — barndos, for short — as large metal structures with high ceilings, open-plan layouts, and garages or workshop areas. “The goal would be as much square footage as you can fit on the site,” said Andy Wiker, a pre-construction project manager at Conestoga Buildings, which builds barndos throughout the Northeast. “People want to play basketball in their living room.”
The style has become so popular that barndos were featured for the first time earlier this year in a national survey of single-family home builders, in which 7 percent of the builders said they had constructed at least one in the past year.
Ms. Bell, who goes by the trademarked name, “The Barndominium Lady,” is part of a growing number of Americans choosing space over cities. | Credit Arturo Olmos for The New York Times
The pandemic drove the recent building surge. Emily Stamper, a loan officer in Kentucky with the lender Rural 1st, said that she first saw demand for barndominiums take off in 2020, when lumber was in short supply, but metal was more readily available.
And according to Stacee Lynn Bell, 60, the self-styled Barndominium Lady, more people wanted bigger homes, more distant neighbors, land to raise chickens and grow vegetables, and an environment “not as hustle-bustle.” Since 2020, Ms. Bell and her 19-person team at the Barndominium Company have designed over 1,000 bespoke barndo plans in 41 states, and she recently hired two more designers to keep up with the craze.
Ms. Bell herself lives in a barndo, about an hour north of Houston near Sam Houston National Forest.
Census data confirms a more widespread preference for country life. According to an analysis by the Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service at the University of Virginia, “migration out of counties with more than one million residents in 2023 remained nearly twice as high as before the pandemic, while migration into the country’s smallest metro areas and rural counties rose in 2023 from already near record levels in 2022.”
One major draw of the style is customizability. The garages — generally big enough to house tractors, ATVs, hunting and fishing gear, and cleaning stations for catches — suit a rural lifestyle, Ms. Bell said. As Ms. Stamper put it, barndominiums “give people a blank canvas to do what they want.”
The Cost of Barn-Sizing
The price is right, too — as long as you’re willing to do some of the construction yourself.
In September 2023, Simona Carr, 43, moved from Marion, Ohio, to Golden Valley, Ariz., where she and her husband had bought 10 acres for $26,000 sight unseen. The area outside Kingman, Ariz., with mostly dirt roads, is like something out of an old western movie, she said, with her closest neighbor about a mile away.
When Simona Carr proposed to her husband that they purchase 10 acres of land in rural Arizona, sight-unseen, his initial reaction was, “Honey, you’re crazy.” Eager to get out of their urban area, they made the leap. | Credit John Burcham for The New York Times
A beginner prepper, Mrs. Carr had been eager to flee the city, she said, “just to be prepared for what might take place in the future.”
For $51,000 a company built the metal exterior structure for her future 3,000-square-foot home. “I could get the big house that I wanted for such a small price,” she said. Once the home is done, Mrs. Carr estimates (optimistically) that the total cost will be $210,000.
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